Browsing by Author "Tuovinen, Emmi"

Purpose. The purpose of this study is to develop a multicultural version of the food education project Ruokakoulu – Matskolan from the perspective of the families and the children. The multicultural version has been developed in cooperation with the Ruokakoulu – Matskolan project in parallel already existing food school format. The aim of this study was to define key concepts for the new multicultural version. One aim was also to investigate what kind of concrete courses of action would promote multicultural education during the camp. The research questions of the study are the following: 1. How do the different cultures and food cultures show in the families? 2. What kind of concrete courses of action or assignments will help with carrying out the multicultural food education project taking into consideration also the perspective of the families? 3. What kind of possibilities eating together is offering for multicultural education? Methodology. The data was collected in two different ways. The first stage was the open questions questionnaire that the research families filled in. The second stage was the focus groups for children at the camp. The questionnaire and the focus groups had both the same questions. Eight families took part of the first stage and all children who attended at the camp participated to the focus groups. The data was analysed using content analysis by categorizing data into themes and then classifying into bigger unities. Results and conclusions. Culture and food culture seems to be difficult concepts for both families and for children. The food culture in the families was described varying. The multi-culturality came up when doing ethnic food choices at home and in restaurants. Eating together was an important moment from perspective of both families and children. When eating together, the whole picture was important: every step from cooking to cleaning up was done together. From the perspective of food education camp, it is important to notice that eating together is a familiar moment to learn for children.